Queen Diahann Carroll (July 17, 1935 – October 4, 2019)
I remember when “Julia” (1968-‘71) came on. I’d run home from school to turn on the black and white television set to watch it. This woman didn’t clean white women’s homes, not that it was shameful work. However, I do not remember wanting to grow up to sweep someone’s floors, wash her windows, cook her food or take care of her kids.
I went to work with my mother in San Francisco where I’d sit still and be “good” while Mama cleaned house for some white woman. The ladies were always nice and sent Mama home with goodies for my kid brother and me, but as soon as my mother passed her GED, she got a job at the Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard and we moved to the Sunnydale projects where we were closer to Mama’s job and I had my own bedroom.
Julia worked as a nurse[1] and she was raising her son alone. I thought she was smart and independent. I didn’t know she was a widow and that her husband died in Vietnam. I saw her holding her own in spaces where she was the only Black woman—now this is the adult me speaking. The ten-year-old me liked her because she was pretty like my Mama and outspoken the way my mother was not. Julia always politely spoke her mind. I liked the fact that she couldn’t be silenced. Her example reminds me to pull the tape off my mouth.
Carroll as “Claudine” (1974), was a different role, but the same rope Black women have been skipping between since their collective arrival as chattel. Claudine has a lot of kids and not a lot of resources. She is smart and listens to her children, who are children of the ‘60s—Black Revolutionary consciousness rocking or shaking up the paradigm that has their mother and others like her swinging too low.
Between the children and the Welfare Department, there isn’t a lot of room for romance, yet this single mother and the persistent suitor portrayed by James Earl Jones, makes this film a treasure and fun to watch, not to mention the score. Jones’ character, a garbage man – the African deity “Esu Legba”, is witty and fun and open to this woman with kids who didn’t like him, especially the older boys. However, he literally grows on them like he grows on their Mama and together the children. They have not met a man like him and therefore benefit from the example the older man sets. This is important, we are what we see.
Ashay to Queen Carroll, may she travel to the next realm with grace and peace. Our condolences to her loved ones, especially her daughter, grandchildren, and all her celebrity sisters and to the little boy who called her Mama on the show for three seasons: actor, Marc Copage who wrote a wonderful essay about his TV mom given his own mom left him at two when his parents divorced: “Diahann Carroll Was the Only Mom I Knew” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/style/diahann-carroll-marc-copage-julia.html.
“Standing Liberty” is a Black Woman
David Moti, Acting Principal Deputy Director, United States Mint, writes on the 225th Anniversary of the US Mint and the release of yet another coin depicting the likeness of an African American woman (2017), that this was not the first time such was issued. In fact, the figure of a woman on the Standing Liberty Double Eagle Gold Coin (1907-1933) desig
ned by Saint-Gaudens’ (“one of the most beautiful coins eve struck”) model is Hettie Anderson, African American.
“Liberty is a statuesque woman striding powerfully forward. Her classical robe and the design’s style evoke antiquity and the nation’s origins as a republic. Liberty is a central American value. The Declaration of Independence proclaims it as an ‘unalienable right,’ and the Constitution explains that it was ordained and established to secure the ‘Blessings of Liberty’ to ensuing generations.” When the US Mint was created in 1792 the legislation stated a need to include the word “liberty” and an emblematic depiction as well on the coin. I am not going to go into the Eurocentic symbolism or the “flowing hair” metaphor. since the goal her is just to recognize yet another incidence of cognitive dissonance or national hypocrisy.
Ms. Anderson’s racial identity is hidden by the artist and his family for almost a hundred years. The William Tecumseh Sherman Monument by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Grand Army Plaza in Manhattan, New York also uses Anderson’s figure. This time she appears as Nike, the goddess of victory.
When I saw the more recent Lady Liberty with clearly African features including textured locs or braids, I purchased the 225th Anniversary silver coin, but I didn’t read the accompanying book until now. I thought this Liberty who instead of the Phrygian cap, wears a crown of stars, inspired by Thomas Crawford’s Statue of Freedom that sits atop the U.S. Capitol Building was the first African woman on such coin when her predecessor was Ms. Anderson (b. 1873) who moved from South Carolina to New York City where she worked as a model, atypical at that time.” Visit Black Excellence.com
Justin Kunz, artist for the 225th coin says “’the [crown of] stars represent the traditional hopeful ideas of liberty, while offering a hint as to the possibilities our future holds in this technological age. It seemed to me a symbol that is still relevant to us as we look forward to the next phase of human civilization.”
I also found it ironic that another African woman’s visage welcomes visitors into the Manhattan harbor, Édouard de Laboulaye’s commission: Statue of Liberty created to celebrate the end of slavery, not to welcome immigrants into this country.
Gina Brockell writes in a Washington Post article May 23, this year, “The Statue of Liberty was created to celebrate freed slaves, not immigrants, its new museum recounts” that Ellis Island, the inspection station through which millions of immigrants passes, didn’t open until six years after the statue was unveiled in 1886. The encryption with Emma Lazarus’s poem, “give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” was added later in 1903.
Édouard de Laboulaye, French historian and abolitionist and friends met at his home in Versailles in June 1865 and thought of this monument as a gift to America on the end of slavery. Unfortunately, by the time the artist, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, completed the work, all semblance of democratic parity had dissipated. The African American press saw the work as a joke given the end of Reconstruction and the resuscitation of Black codes called Jim Crow.
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/05/23/statue-liberty-was-created-celebrate-freed-slaves-not-immigrants)
On the Fly:
White Noise by Suzan-Lori Parks, Sept. 26-Nov. 10, at Berkeley Rep; Great Wave, bu Frances Turnly, Sept. 12-Oct. 27, at BRT, (510) 647-2949; berkeleyrep.org; Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble and Hasmik Harutyunyan in “Gorani: Love Songs to Lost Homelands” in three (3) locations: Rohnert Park, Oct. 17, 6:30 pm., Green Music Center; Oakland, Friday, Oct. 18, 8 p.m. at St. Vartan Armenian Church; San Jose, Oct. 19, Hammer Tehatre Center. Visit www.kitka.org Oakland Symphony 2019-2020 season opens Friday, Oct. 11, 8 p.m. with Hot as Hell/ Cool Jazz with Arrigo Boito: Prologue from Mefistofele and a new composition and performance by jazz masters Taylor Eigsti, piano and Josiah Woodson, trumpet. Visit oaklandsymphony.org or call (510) 444-8002. Marin Theatre Company presents: Sovereignty by Mary Kathryn Nagle Sept. 26-Oct. 20. Visit marintheatre.org or call (415) 388-5208; Single Black Female at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, October 26-Nov. 10, at the Buriel Clay Theatre, African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton Street, San Francisco. Visit https://www.lhtsf.org/ or call 415-474-8800; Othello @ African American Shakes Friday-Sat., Oct. 11-.12-Oct. 26-27 at the Marine’s Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, 2nd Floor. Call (800) 838-3006 or visit https://www.african-americanshakes.org/productions/othello/
23rd Arab Film Festival, Oct. 11-20 at the Roxie
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Ritual Theatre Performance
ODC Theater presents Àse Dance Theatre Collective in the West Coast premiere of Have K(NO!)w Fear: A Bluessical with Adia Tamar Whitaker: Artistic Direction, Choreography. . .
October 17 – 19, 2019, Thursday – Saturday at 8 p.m. at ODC Theater, 3153 17th Street, San Francisco. Tickets are: $15 – $30. To purchase tickets, call 415-863-9834. Or online visit odc.dance/Bluessical. To listen to an interview with Whitaker visit Wanda’s Picks Radio Show, Wed., Oct. 9, 2019 (http://tobtr.com/s/11530597).
Film
“Always in Season” (89 min.), Oct. 23, 7 p.m., Big Roxie with director, Jacqueline Olive and editor Don Bernier in person for Q&A at special advanced screening on October 23 & opening night, November 1. https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/always-in-season/?instance_id=37189
Synopsis for Always in Season: Claudia Lacy wants answers. When her 17-year-old son, Lennon, was found hanging from a swing set in Bladenboro, North Carolina, the authorities quickly ruled his death a suicide. In light of suspicious details surrounding his death, and certain that her son would not take his own life, Claudia is convinced Lennon was lynched.
400 Years of Resistance to Slavery and Injustice Series
As a part of its 400 Years of Resistance to Slavery and Injustice Series, a coordinated response to the creation of a federal commission to study the impact of Black lives on the making of America and the impact this system had and has had on African people then and now.
UC Berkeley adopted an initiative to look at scholarship that engages community in critical discussion around this “taboo” topic. The series began in August and continue through Spring 2020. Events include film and author events, poetry readings and lots of conversations which invite a collective interrogation of the 21st century freedom dance African people continue to perform despite all the legislation that says slavery is past. The events are all free: https://400years.berkeley.edu/events/oct-10-savannah-shange-and-blackgirlhood-imaginary
Dance and Film
10th Annual San Francisco Dance Film Festival, Saturday Nov. 2 – Sunday Nov. 10th, multiple venues. Visit www.sfdancefilmfest.org/tickets/ Highlights of the 10th annual San Francisco Dance Film Festival (SFDFF), featuring over 120 dance-based films from 25 countries and the Bay Area. The film festival will include selected post-screening discussions, industry panel presentations, VR experiences and live performances, and the presentation of the Festival’s first Embodiment Award for artistic excellence and influence to special guest international Jookin’ superstar Lil’ Buck.
Local Focus African American Films:
Mapenzi (Afia Thompson) — in the Raising Voices shorts program
https://www.sfdancefilmfest.org/film/mapenzi-a-dancers-love-affair-with-dance-body-and-the-arts/; About Face https://www.sfdancefilmfest.org/film/about-face/; If Cities Could Dance: Oakland https://www.sfdancefilmfest.org/film/if-cities-could-dance-oakland/; If Cities Could Dance: Richmond https://www.sfdancefilmfest.org/film/if-cities-could-dance-richmond-california/
There are numerous other African American and African films in this year’s festival including:
Lil’ Buck (Nov. 9, Brava Theatre Center); https://www.sfdancefilmfest.org/film/lil-buck-real-swan/; The Circle; Color of Reality; Ina (Light); Kaddume; MAI: Am I A Man; Searching for Wonder; Sound and Sole; T.I.A. (THIS is Africa); What Came Before
[1] Carroll’s mother Mabel (Faulk), was a nurse